Bomb blast kills 25 bus passengers in Afghan west

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At least 25 Afghan passengers were killed and 20 wounded when their bus was hit by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan on Wednesday, the government said.

"Afghanistan once again saw a day of bloodshed of innocent civilian lives," Ghulam Dastgir Azaad, the governor of Nimroz where the incident occurred, told Reuters.

The bus was on its way from Nimroz's Delaram district, about 700 kms (430 miles) from the capital, Kabul, when the bomb exploded.

Women and children were among the casualties, the interior ministry said in Kabul, blaming "Afghanistan's enemies" for the blast, a term often used by Afghan officials to describe the Taliban and their militant allies.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose troops are the primary target of Taliban bombs, condemned the attack.

"Afghan and coalition forces were on patrol on route 606 when they discovered the disabled bus," the alliance said in a statement.

The incident coincided with the publication on Monday by the whistleblower group WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of classified U.S. documents which cast a new light on civilians caught up in what the website called "the true nature of this war."

Roadside bombs or Improvised Explosive Device, (IEDs) are by far the most lethal weapon the Taliban insurgents have been heavily using against thousands of foreign troops and the Afghan government.

IEDs are the cause of most deaths of Afghan and international forces as well as civilians.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said foreign troops had "deliberately planted the device in order to discredit the Taliban."

He said foreign forces had also carried out the attack to divert attention from dozens of civilians who were killed in a NATO rocket attack in neighboring Helmand this week.

The Afghan government has said that 52 civilians were killed in a NATO rocket strike, but the alliance disputes the accounts, saying a joint investigation is still ongoing.

(Reporting by Sharafuddin Sharafiyar; Editing by David Fox and Miral Fahmy)